He recalled watching her play that piano, on that stage, just a couple of years earlier. Her virtuosity had stunned him as much as her choice of portfolio—songs drawn from catalogs of up-tempo Terran blues and jazz, music of tremendous complexity and expressiveness. She had been able to inspire crowds to standing ovations after performing a single number. Her long, graceful fingers had tickled those keys with subtlety or pounded them without mercy, but always with passion and precision. Now she hunched over the immaculately polished Steinway and poked at it like a child prodding a dead animal with a stick, a portrait of uncertainty and sorrow.
Pennington nudged open the kitchen’s swinging door and sidled into the dining room, hoping to approach a bit closer before announcing himself. As soon as he let the kitchen door close, T’Prynn stopped, turned her head, and stared directly at him.
He was annoyed at being found out so easily. Damn that Vulcan hearing.
T’Prynn stood and hurried down the stage steps, then slalomed through the tables and chairs toward him. “What are you doing here, Mister Pennington?”
Hooking his thumb backward, he said, “I heard the music from outside.”
“And you used it as a rationale for trespassing?”
He recoiled from the accusation. “What about you?”
She stopped in front of him. “I’m here with Manуn’s permission.”
Looking up slightly to meet her confrontational stare, he was struck by the imposing quality of her dark beauty. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to intrude.”
She took him by the arm and pulled him back the way he’d come, through the kitchen. “If you have no further business here, I’d suggest—”
“Hang on,” he cut in, stumbling to keep up with her. “Maybe I can help.”
“I don’t need your help.” She pushed open the rear exit and shoved Pennington through the doorway, back out to the alley behind the cabaret.
He spun back to face her and grabbed the door’s edge. “I remember how you used to play. You stopped after your breakdown. They’re connected, aren’t they?”
“Most insightful,” T’Prynn said. “But I don’t wish to discuss it.” She tried to shut the door, but he held it open, albeit with great difficulty. “Let me go.”
He shook his head. “Not till you talk to me. I was there the day you saw the Malacca get bombed. I saw the look on your face, and I knew it, ’cause I’d seen it on mine the day I lost someone I loved.” His words seemed to crack T’Prynn’s stern faзade, and he saw a fleeting instant of vulnerability in her eyes. Remembering her sexual orientation, he took a chance on a wild guess. “What was her name, T’Prynn?”
She didn’t answer him, but the momentary anguish that possessed her features told him he had deduced the nature of her distress. Visibly struggling to recover her composure, she succeeded only in transforming grief to fury. “Go home, Tim.” Then she yanked the door closed with overwhelming force, and Pennington let it go to prevent her from amputating his fingers.
The door slammed shut, and he heard its lock click into place.
Everyone makes their journey alone.
6
Nogura set the data slate on his desk, reclined his chair, and rubbed his eyes. It was the middle of the night, close to 0300, the scheduled launch time of the Ephialtes, and he was burning the midnight oil so that the Sagittarius and her crew would not embark for danger while he slept.
There was no shortage of work demanding his attention. He had asked for a steady stream of hot tea and productive distractions, and his three yeomen had obliged him, one duty shift at a time. From 0800 to 1600, Lieutenant Toby Greenfield had piled his desk high with the latest news and administrative paperwork from the Federation’s numerous colonies throughout the Taurus Reach. From 1600 to midnight, Ensign Suzie Finneran had buried Nogura beneath an avalanche of reports from the station’s department heads, including maintenance, security, and engineering, as well as an update from Starfleet Command on the latest fleet deployments. He had found the criminal-activity reports especially entertaining reading, and so had saved most of them to enjoy while he ate his dinner.
For the past three hours, he had been attended by his gamma shift yeoman, Lieutenant Lisa McMullan, a cherub-cheeked woman in her twenties. She managed to convey both joviality and professionalism with her easy manner and quick smile, and she had been intuitive enough to sense that as Nogura’s day dragged into its twenty-first hour it might be time to fill his docket with lighter fare. She had loaded a slate with all his unread personal correspondence from home and had even been savvy enough to secure the latest recording from his favorite jazz quartet back on Earth, an album of music that fused classical jazz styles with the Mardi Gras chants of New Orleans’ traditional Creole Indians. It was utterly unlike anything else Nogura had ever heard. Listening to it inside the refuge of his office, he marveled at the way a single piece of music could bridge the gulfs between centuries, cultures, and ideas.
The buzz of his intercom broke the music’s enthralling spell. He turned down the volume and then opened the channel. “Yes?”
McMullan replied, “You have a visitor, sir.”
He furrowed his brow in disbelief. “At this hour?”
“It’s Doctor Fisher, sir.”
That was two bits of unexpected news in quick succession. “Send him in.”
The door opened with a soft pneumatic hiss, and Doctor Ezekiel Fisher, the station’s chief medical officer, walked in and saluted Nogura with a data slate. “Evening, Admiral.”
“Doctor. Everything all right?”
Fisher stopped in front of Nogura’s desk, looking quite mellow. “Couldn’t be righter.”
Nogura leaned forward and folded his hands on the desktop. “So. What brings you here at oh-dark-hundred?” He held up his hand to forestall Fisher’s response. “No, wait, let me guess.” After a pause for dramatic effect, he added, “I’m overdue for my annual physical.”
The elderly surgeon grinned, his perfectly white teeth brilliant in the middle of his deep brown face. “Probably. But that’s no skin off my nose. Care to guess again?”
“An outbreak of Typerian meningitis aboard the station?”
Amused, Fisher shook his head. “Not that I’ve heard.”
Nogura was too fatigued to continue with guessing or small talk. “Out with it, then.”
Fisher handed him a data slate and waited until the admiral activated it before he spoke. “I’m resigning my commission and my post, effective immediately.”
The news left Nogura dumbfounded. He put down the slate. “Why?”
“The simple truth?” Fisher looked tired. “There’s nothing left here to make me want to stay.” He gestured at one of the chairs in front of Nogura’s desk. “May I?” Nogura motioned for the man to sit down, and once Fisher had settled into a chair, he continued. “I was halfway out the door to my retirement when this assignment landed in my lap. The only reason I took it was to be there for Diego. After all we’d been through, I felt like I owed it to him.”
A veteran of many such obligations born of shared service, Nogura sympathized. “I understand. You and Commodore Reyes served together for a long time.”
“Yes, we did.” Fisher turned thoughtful. “After I thought he’d been killed in the ambush on the Nowlan, I stayed here to look after Rana. I knew how much she’d meant to him, and I couldn’t leave until I knew she’d be okay.”
Nogura had known that Fisher and Captain Rana Desai, the former ranking officer of the station’s JAG division, were friends, but he hadn’t really understood the context of their relationship until that moment. “I’m sure Captain Desai was grateful for your support.”